Another
Diocesan Priest
Rejects Novus
Ordo
Thomas
A. Droleskey, Ph.D.
REMNANT
COLUMNIST,
http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/
Father Paul Sretenovic, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New
Jersey, who was ordained to the priesthood in 2002, has abandoned the Novus
Ordo in order to embrace Catholic Tradition without compromise. Father Sretenovic (pronounced Stre-ten-o-vich) informed his ordinary, the Most Reverend
John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, of his decision in a letter mailed to his
Excellency’s home address on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Wednesday,
December 28, 2004:
“Your Excellency: I am writing to inform you of my decision to leave the
Archdiocese of Newark. It is a decision that is eighteen months in the making,
and it has finally come to a head. This archdiocese, while retaining some very
good priests, is, like every other diocese in the Catholic Church today, plagued
by the heresy of modernism in many different forms. I recently attended a Monday
afternoon of Reflection at Southmont with the Opus Dei priests and listened as
one of them said that we are not looking to return to Christendom. To me, that
said it all. It is not just about the Latin Mass. It is something much, much deeper, and
it is the basis of my decision. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Primas, said that Jesus
Christ is not only the Lord of every individual, but also of every human
society. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, #77, in particular, exposes
the error of separation of Church and State, a doctrine now upheld by the
Vatican as the ideal, using both the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on
Religious Liberty, which could very easily have been called the Declaration of Religious Liberty
(reference to our Declaration of Independence intended), as well as individual
decisions from the Vatican to accelerate such a separation in what were
otherwise thoroughly Catholic countries, such as, among others, Colombia, 98%
Catholic. The orientation of the Church is now very much in line with the
principles of the French Revolution, namely liberty, fraternity, and equality.
Hence, the mainstay catchwords from the Council—religious
liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. That is not a coincidence, and it is
evil. The Liturgy is just one of the many lambs to be slaughtered along the way
towards a Christian Democracy, which, to the dismay and shock of many in the
Church, will lead directly to the worldwide takeover of Atheistic Communism,
warned of indirectly by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and communicated by Sr.
Lucia to the Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in 1946.
“In the situation in which
I am now, and basically in any Novus Ordo parish
anywhere in the world, let alone this particular Archdiocese, I always have to
watch my back and I always, at each and every Mass that I offer, have to
compromise. Whether it is in the bad wording or bland prayers of the Sacramentary, or in the distribution of Communion in the
hand, or in the virtually mandatory use of Extraordinary ministers of Holy
Communion, there is always something there to remind me, as the song goes, and
it stops now. I pray to God and to Our Blessed Mother that you obtain the grace
necessary to perceive the gravity of the present situation and to act
accordingly. I include my email address below for further correspondence. I know
this is a shock, but for me, even the FSSP would be a compromise. Haven’t we all
done enough of that?! As people were looking East this Advent season, Our Lady
was leading me to, go West. In Christ the King, Fr. Paul Branko Sretenovic.”
In an e-mail to this writer sent on January 9, 2005, Father Sretenovic explained the sequence of events after this
point:
“To give you the backdrop of my correspondence with the Archbishop, he
said that parts of what I wrote, without specifying, were ‘inaccurate’ and
‘unfair.’ I responded through the Vicar General for the time-being that what I
wrote was not ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I then asked the question as to whether
the Archbishop would say that Cardinal Ratzinger was
either of the two, specifying the terms, when he wrote that through the Council, the Church had ‘come to terms with the principles of
1789.’ I left it at that and will write the Archbishop directly within the
week.”
Father Sretenovic had determined quite clearly
that he could no longer make any further compromises with a Mass that did not
give God the full honor and glory that are His due and a pastoral approach to
the problems of the world that was premised upon a rejection of a defined
teaching of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, and an
actual embrace of the errors of Modernity and Modernism.
Father Sretenovic did indeed head west, leaving
Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in Maywood, New Jersey, on Thursday, December
29, 2004, the Feast of Saint Thomas a Becket, to drive out to Our Lady Help of
Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, joining Father Patrick J. Perez
and Father Lawrence C. Smith in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass and
the totality of the Catholic Faith in all of its integrity to Catholics in one
of the most liturgically revolutionary places in the whole Church, the
Metropolitan Province of Los Angeles, California. Father Sretenovic distributed Holy Communion to the faithful at Our
Lady Help of Christians on the Feast of the Holy Family on Sunday, January 9,
2005, saying, “I have never before felt like I did in my first Traditional
giving of the Eucharist, or however you want to put it. It was awesome and I
felt like a priest in a way that I haven't before. The formula is much better,
not to mention the signing of the Cross, and the use of the paten for the Sacred
Particles, AND the posture of the people with open mouths, heads tilted upwards
like chicks eagerly welcoming their mother with the food that she is providing
for them.” [He offered his first Traditional Latin Mass there on Sunday, January
16, 2005.]
Father Sretenovic, who was born on January 8,
1974, found his way to Our Lady Help of Christians within three months of
meeting Father Perez at Father Nicholas Gruner’s
Fatima conference in
Father Sretenovic contacted this writer in
early December of 2004, and a luncheon meeting was arranged in
Father Sretenovic carefully weighed his
options, keeping in close contact with Father Lawrence C. Smith, who left the
Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, on September 8, 2003. Father Sretenovic also had contact with priests in the Society of
Saint Pius X, determining ultimately that it would be best for him to be with
Fathers Perez and Smith in
Father Sretenovic was not heedless of the fact
that his own ordinary, Archbishop Myers, though not a traditionalist himself,
has been sympathetic to priests desirous of offering the Traditional Latin Mass.
Father Sretenovic also understood, however, that the
embrace of Tradition, while it starts with the Mass, involves quite
fundamentally an embrace of the totality of the Catholic Faith without any taint
of corruption by the novelties and errors of the past forty to forty-seven
years. Father Sretenovic also knows that ordinaries
come and go, a point demonstrated quite graphically
when Bishop John Myers of
The story of Father Paul Sretenovic continues,
therefore, a remarkable display of courage on the part of diocesan priests who
have been willing to forsake all of their canonical safety and human respect in
order to embrace Tradition without compromise. Men such as Fathers Sretenovic and Zigrang and Smith
were ordained after the implementation of the liturgical revolution had
begun. Father Zigrang was ordained in 1977. Father
Smith was ordained in 1997. Father Sretenovic was
ordained in 2002. Although there have been priests (such as Father Stephen
Somerville) who were ordained in the Traditional rite and have returned thereto,
the embrace of Tradition by priests who are relatively young (in the case of
Father Zigrang) or very young (in the case of Fathers
Smith and Sretenovic) is particularly galling to the
liturgical revolutionaries, men and women who brook no opposition and who
protest with great vehemence the glories of the “liturgical renewal.” How can it
be, they ask themselves, that men who have been immersed in their handiwork all
of their lives can become counter-revolutionaries and reject all of their
“enlightened” schemes and programs?
The revolutionaries can protest all they want. The plain fact of the
matter is that there are a number of priests across the nation who may be
following the examples of Fathers Zigrang, Smith and
Sretenovic. More than a handful of priests are on the
fence as this is being written. Some are waiting for
Indeed, the witness given by Fathers Zigrang,
Smith and Sretenovic, as well as the witness given by
the bishops and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, to the necessity of
proclaiming the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without
any dilution serves as an inspiration to the sheep who are seeking safety and
security in the midst of doctrinal and liturgical instability and turmoil within
the diocesan structures. They are willing to be calumniated, even by fellow
traditionalists who have anointed themselves to be in the august and pristine
"mainstream," in order to bear a witness to the authentic Tradition of the
Church without any compromise at all. No loss of human respect and no amount of
name-calling or sloganeering will ever deter them from giving their sheep the
fullness of the Catholic Faith.
At least some of the sheep will respond when their
shepherds put themselves on the line to give them what is their due, namely, the
Traditional Latin Mass. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, for example, have
found their way to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in
Father Paul Sretenovic finds himself some 3,000
miles away from his parents, who are residents of
Our Lady Help of
Christians, pray for Father Sretenovic. Pray for all
traditionally-minded priests to follow his example of pure love for Tradition
without fear of the canonical and/or temporal consequences. Pray for us sheep,
that we might make the sacrifices necessary to help our shepherds feed us with
the pure milk of Tradition.